Friday, November 16, 2007

Apple Support on iMac hibernation

A few days ago I rang Apple Support at 133MAC regarding how to enable hibernation on my iMAC running Leopard. The reason of why I need hibernation on iMac is that I have been got used to this feature on my Windows notebooks for years, and I sometimes do need to move my iMac from one room to another at home.

Hibernation allows you to save and then restore your current work environment instantly, including opened windows, running applications, and their data in use. Actually, hibernation just dumps your computer memory in use to a file on hard disk, marks the system partition in hibernation mode, therefore you can restore what it was in the system memory next time you boot the computer, instead of loading the operating system step by step. I like this feature as I do often open more than 10 applications at the same time, so I hate to restart each application again and again every time I turn on the computer.

OK, back to the Apple Support at 133MAC. After I explained what I needed to the tech support, he quickly asked me to change something in System Preferences | Energy Saver | Sleep, where I had tried first when I was finding out this functionality on iMac. Then the following conversation between the Apple support (A) and me (B) started:

B: "No, no, no. I need hibernation, not to simply sleep, I need to unplug the power cord then."
A: "Why?!"
B: "I do need to move the iMac from one room to another, but I dislike to shut donwn, restart, and reopen the applications again."
B: "I think Sleep mode still needs the power, doesn't it?"
A: "Yes, it does. Umm... hang on, let me double check it..." (typing something on the keyboard)
B: "Are you searching from somewhere else?"
A: "Yes."
B: "Is it Apple KB, Knowledge Base?"
A: "Yeah, we have Apple Knowledge Base. It is very informative."
B: "That's cool. Have you found something helpful?"
A: "No. I am sorry, you can't do that. We don't support it."
B: "Really?! I just switched from Windows to Mac OS. I have got used this feature. It's very handy. I need it."
A: "Unfortunately, we do not support this on Mac. You are using an Apple."
B: "Oh..., is there any possible solution? I really need this functionality."
A: "Umm... can you please hold the line for a moment, I wanna consult other engineers."
B: "Sure. OK."
A: "Thanks mate."
...
A: "Are you still here mate?"
B: "Yes. Any good news?"
A: "Unfortunately, no. We do not support hibernation on Mac."
B: "Oh..."
A: "Even so, you may consider to get a long power cord, an extended one, so you can move your iMac..., you know."
B: "Hehe... is it a solution? An Apple's solution?"
A: "Well, it's a solution, if you like."
B: "An official solution from Apple?"
A: "Well..."
B: "I hate cords, cables, wires..., that's why I bought an iMac, a wireless iMac."
A: "Anyway, you still need, at least, a power cord for your computer, so an extended cord allows you..."
...

An extended power cord is Apple's solution for hibernation.

3 comments:

Jose Canciani said...

Maybe they don't supported but it's doable, I have it working in my iMac with Leopard.

With Leopard:
=============
Check current status from the Terminal typing: "pmset -g | grep hibernatemode"
0 = standard sleep mode, 3 = new hibernate style mode (safe sleep).
To enable it: "sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3"
Image file is save in /var/vm/sleepimage

With Tiger:
===========

There is a widget called DeepSleep. You can manually do it too, look at http://andrewescobar.com/archive/2005/11/11/how-to-safe-sleep-your-mac/

Very funny though. In these cases you should call support several times, until you find an expirienced guy.

Regards,
Jose.
http://www.4tm.com.ar/

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